


His Lord Father

by CelticPixie (ArcherHybrid)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Original Character(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 16:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19277200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcherHybrid/pseuds/CelticPixie
Summary: A three year boy, green-eyed and yellow of hair, speaks to his father's spirit in the Godswood





	His Lord Father

He ran on wobbly legs—a small child of three; green-eyed, yellow of hair. Bare feet trudged through thick blades of rich grass, warmed by the high sun peaking over the branches of elm, alder, and black cottonwood. Unlike the weirwoods of other Godswoods, the heart-tree in the Godswood at the Red Keep is a great oak covered in smokeberry vines. He was brought here before, but he wouldn’t have remembered; the child was still yet a small babe, barely out of the womb, still suckling at his mother’s teet; he’d been blessed here and brought under the protection of the crown. He would want for nothing; his mother and his protectors would see to that. The child was raised under the faith of his mother, but he was much too small yet to understand the words of prayer.

He knew of only one thing; his lord father was buried here. Death was still a foreign concept to the child. He once caught his lady ser mother lost in prayer; she did not pray to the gods of her faith, but to the man who fathered her son; his name passed her lips, gently, so easily as the moment she first discovered the life within her. This small child of three came to his mother that night, begging her to tell him the name of the man she prayed too; smiling, she gathered her child into her arms, pressed him to her breasts, and told him the tale of the greatest knight she had ever known.

The child knew he shouldn’t be out here alone. They’d scour the Keep for him, until they found him here, and his mother would scold him something fierce for running off. Maybe she would be merciful; the stories she would tell him of the Golden Knight had spurred ideas into his mind; the child was desperate for just a few moments alone with the man he knew to be his father. As the heart-tree approached, the child dropped to his knees and prayed, as his mother taught him. He prayed to the Faith to bless his mother, and his uncle, as they were the only link to his father; through their stories, he felt as if he knew the man. But most important, he prayed to the Faith for his lord father, to keep him safe, and happy, and to hold hope in his tiny heart that the man taken before his time would know of his son, no matter where his spirit was.

The boy didn’t know for certain if his lord father could hear him, but he spoke so fervently; “Mama’s been tellin’ me stories, papa! She said you were a great knight! She said you was so brave and strong! I wanna be a knight when I growed up!! Innit that great, papa?” Silence; the grass said nothing, the tree said nothing; the boy didn’t know what kind of response he’d been hoping for, but his eyes blossomed with fat tears when he did not receive an answer. He wiped at his face as the tears spilled over, running in ringlets down his portly cheeks.

Elsewhere, his lady mother watched; she’d been scouring the castle for her son, cursing at those who might stop her path, only to find him in the one place she warned him not to go to alone. But, when faced with scolding the young child, she found that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she joined him. The boy hadn’t realized his mother was there until she had the lad scooped up into her warm arms. He cuddled up to her, and she kisses his golden yellow hair.

She saw him crying, and she wiped his tears, cooing at him softly; “Do not cry, sweetling.” She loved moments like this, cuddling him close as she did, for one day he’d be grown and a lord of his own, with a castle and a family and children.

“Mama, do you miss papa?” He asked her, sniffling his tears; _be brave_ , she told him once.

Oh, if only her child could fathom the weight she bore. “Very much so, my sweet summer child. I still mourn for him. When you were a babe in my belly, I mourned for him then. When I held you in my arms and fed you as mothers do, I mourned for him. When I gave you your name and realized how much you resemble him, I mourned for him. But we should not mourn for the dead. We should celebrate the great deeds they left behind. In that way, we will always remember them.” She pressed a kiss to his brow. “Come, Brynden.”

“Mama, can we come back tomorrow?”

How could she possibly say no? Brienne nodded. She took him back to his room, and laid him down for the night, kissing sweetly, promising she would take him to the Godswood tomorrow so he could speak to his lord father again. As his breathing evened and she knew he was asleep, Brienne drew from his bedchambers, shutting the door behind her. Sighing, she pressed her forehead to the door; _Keep him safe, Jaime._

_Surely, Jaime Lannister was watching his son, smiling as the boy slept._

**Author's Note:**

> *sniffles* The amount of FEELS this brought me as I wrote it. Oh... oh the feels...


End file.
